About this Event
Please join the Africa Research Group for the launch of the new book 'Escaping the Conflict Trap?: Seeking Stability in Liberia and Sierra Leone' (Lynne Rienner).
While fragile countries around the world have reverted to conflict soon after the achievement of a purported peace deal, how have both Liberia and Sierra Leone maintained a relative, if sometimes precarious, stability for the more than two decades since their civil wars ended?
Alan Doss and David Harris will discuss their new book which seeks to draw on their combined experiences as a practitioner and an academic to explore the elements of the peace processes in Liberia and Sierra Leone, the roles and activities of key local, regional, and international actors, and the structural factors that aided or hindered the progress of peacebuilding. They will compare their two core cases with that of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Assessing how institutions, polices, and political choices interacted across decades, they reflect on the significance of their findings for ongoing and future efforts to end civil wars.
Speakers:
Alan Doss is Former Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and has led UN peacekeeping and stabilization operations in Côte d’Ivoire, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. He is the author of A Peacekeeper in Africa; Learning from UN Interventions in Other People's Wars.
David Harris is honorary visiting researcher in the Department of Peace Studies and International Development at the University of Bradford. He specialises in West African politics, in particular in Sierra Leone, Liberia, The Gambia and Ghana. He is the author of 'Sierra Leone: A Political History' (Hurst, 2013).
Discussants:
Felix Marco Conteh is a Sierra Leonean Researcher at Lancaster University specialising in political economy and natural resource governance. He holds a PhD in Politics and International Studies from SOAS, University of London. His research examines Sierra Leone’s political settlement, political economy, including decentralisation and natural resource governance. His work has been published in journals such as The Journal of Modern African Studies, Extractive Industries and Society, Resources Policy and Critical African Studies, among others.
Mats Berdal is Professor of Security & Development at King's College London. His research covers the role of the UN in international peace and security, specifically their involvement in the mitigation, containment, and resolution of civil wars. Recent work in this area has focused on questions relating to the use of force by the UN; international ‘state-building’ efforts in Afghanistan; UN peacekeeping in civil war settings, humanitarian action in war, and the history of the ‘responsibility to protect.’
Chair:
Kieran Mitton is Reader in Conflict, Security and Development at King's College London and co-Chair of the Africa Research Group. He specialises in field research on violence and youth marginality, with extensive experience in Sierra Leone, Brazil and South Africa. He is the author of 'Rebels in a Rotten State: Understanding Atrocity in the Sierra Leonean Civil War' (Hurst, 2015).
Following discussion with our expert panel there will be an opportunity for Q&A with the audience.
Event venue & nearby stays
Dockrill Room, Department of War Studies, (KIN 628), King's College London, London, United Kingdom
Concerts, fests, parties, meetups — all the happenings, one place.